What changes might be what Jutfrank calls its aspect, and I might not fully appreciate the significance of that. My unschooled opinion is that his use of will signals that he's imagining, recalling, or visualizing. Without will, he would simply reporting. (Jut, if you're reading this, you can tell me whether I'm on the right track.)
But his use of will there certainly doesn't say anything about his mood. With or without it, it would be clear that he enjoys showing his kid things in the microscope and talking about them — a typical dad!
First of all, I'll aplogise to you Charlie for not answering before. For some reason I didn't actually see your post. I've no idea why—I'm a bit blind today. Sorry.
I don't think I used the word 'aspect' in this thread, apart from to say that I don't think this can be understood very usefully with aspect.
Um, whether you're on the right track—I think maybe you are, yes. The modality (what is expressed with the modal verb
will) tells us something about the speaker's
attitude to the facts rather than about the facts themselves. Hmm, maybe I could explain what I mean like this:
a)
The sun rises tomorrow at 6:35.
This is presented as a fact. There's no modality expressed. I think this is what Charlie may be getting at when he says without
will it's "simply reporting".
b)
The sun will rise tomorrow at 6:35.
This is different in that there is a modality expressed by
will. You could understand that the difference is that the speaker is saying something about his understanding of the facts. In other words, he's saying that he's making a
prediction rather than stating a mere fact. The 'certainty' is a function of the speaker's attitude about the probability of the sun rising at that time. This certainty is in the speaker's mind, if you like, rather than in some way in nature itself. I think that's what Alexey is getting at with the subjective/objective distinction.
I think I'm at that point now where I have no idea if my elaborations are making everything clearer or muddier than it was before!
By the way, Charlie, when Alexey mentions 'mood', he doesn't mean mood in the sense of feeling happy or annoyed or whatever—it's a technical linguistics term. I like to use 'modality' instead.
And Alexey, I recall you promised your next question would be an easy one! (Still, I'm thankful it's not about the word
the.) :-D